‘The permanence of Christian burial and the application of Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299 has been a continuing theme on L&RUK, and has also been explored in Leading Works on Law and Religion. This is the first of three posts in which we consider exhumation for the purpose of examining the remains of monarchs, mass murderers, and for medical research. Most recently, in Re St. John’s Cemetery Elswick [2018] ECC New 4, the court granted a faculty for a temporary disinterment for the purposes of obtaining a DNA analysis from bone fragments to be taken from the remains, in relation to a criminal conviction of the petitioner’s husband.’

‘A paedophile accused of killing two nine-year-old girls more than three decades ago has gone on trial for a second time as prosecutors seek to draw on scientific advances in forensics on top of evidence from an original trial.’

‘The pioneering technique used to identify a British widow’s sadistic killer has led to hundreds of crimes being solved around the world. How was familial DNA searching used to catch a murderer for the first time, 15 years ago, and more recently the suspected Golden State Killer?’

‘Police have revealed the identity of the so-called Croydon cat killer. Experts ruled foxes or other wildlife were likely behind the mutilations of several hundred cats that died in the south London borough and beyond, the Metropolitan Police said. There is no evidence of human involvement in the grisly incidents, the force said following an investigation lasting nearly three years, adding that it had informed the RSPCA and campaign group South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (Snarl) of its findings.’

‘The “smoke and mirror” tactics of defence lawyers in drink-driving cases have been criticised by the government’s forensic science regulator, who has launched an investigation into the work of a number of expert witnesses.’